


The Trouble with Strangers at Parties

by maracolleenbanks



Category: Dreamwalkers Universe
Genre: Gen, Hipsters, New Year's Eve, New York City, Shyness, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maracolleenbanks/pseuds/maracolleenbanks





	The Trouble with Strangers at Parties

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dreamwalkers Universe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/404337) by Siren Tycho and Mara Colleen Banks. 



Every New Year’s Eve, my cousin Eddy invites me to a party at his house. I don’t know why he invites me. He’s a curator at a museum that collects the napkin drawings and receipt sketches of famous artists I’ve never heard of, and everyone he invites is part of the arts scene. To say that I don’t fit in is an understatement. The only hope I will ever have of being artistic is tripping and falling into a tuba. Still, the invitation comes every year, and every year I say, “Yes,” way too quickly and immediately regret it. Then I spend the entire party trying to hide and failing because, apparently, there isn’t much money in curating napkins, and Eddy’s studio apartment isn’t much bigger than a tuba. 

I go because every year Eddy gives the invitation in person, cornering me at my mother’s birthday party and staring at me intensely, as if me not giving the right answer—that is, “Yes”—will scar his soul.

This year was no exception, and, to make matters worse, Eddy gave me the wrong time. He told me to come half an hour before the party actually started. We needed time to bond, he said, by which he meant grilling me about my internship at the Public Works Department for an hour and a half while he made snacks that looked like holly branches out of a spherified Bloody Mary and kale while he poured me shot after shot of small batch moonshine made by a friend of his in Brooklyn. 

I suspect he felt bad for me, and this was his attempt to make the party less awkward for me, but by the time the other guests started to arrive my tolerance for alcohol and conversation was at zero. 

Fortunately, one of the guests—a photographer who spent most of the year in the backwoods of Maine writing in her journals and taking pictures of moose—had never seen spherified alcohol before and distracted my cousin long enough with his own brilliance that I was able to slip into the bathroom unnoticed.

By some miracle, I only felt nauseated and didn’t actually have to vomit, so I clanked the toilet seat in case anyone was listening and then pressed my forehead to the window and closed my eyes, relishing the feel of the cool glass on my face and the sound of rain pinging off the fire escape. 

I could have stayed like that for hours and might have done if something hadn’t cooed right next to my ear. I opened my eyes. It was a mourning dove, wet and shivering on the other side of the glass. I opened the window. Before I had time to realize what a stupid decision this was, the mourning dove had already stepped inside. 

I made for the door, hoping I could sneak out without anyone seeing me. 

“You don’t intend to leave the window open, do you?” a voice asked behind me. “It’ll let the rain in.”

My hand was already on the door knob. I could have walked through, but curiosity got the better of me. I turned around, and a rumpled old woman in baggy brown clothes was dripping puddles onto the bathroom floor, and the mourning dove was gone.

“I don’t think anyone will notice now,” I said, nodding at the wet floor.

“Still,” the old woman said, closing the window herself. “I suppose you would like a wish, then, for getting me out of the rain.”

I might have been drunk, but I wasn’t stupid. The only right answer when someone offers you a wish is, “Yes,” as long as it’s free, of course, and you don’t have to sign anything or tell them where you live.

“Well, then, what do you want?” she asked as she climbed into the tub and started wringing the rain out of her clothes.

“Infinite wishes, obviously,” I said.

“I can’t do that, unfortunately,” she said.

“How about three?” I asked, and she shook her head sadly. “Is there a rule against wishing for more wishes?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “The problem is wishes I’ve already given away. I’m not a dreamer, you see. I can’t just pull things out of my head like humans can.”

“Humans can pull things out of our heads?” I asked.

“Almost everywhere but where you are, darling,” she said. “I’m so sorry, but that’s why I wander around the lost planets, you see. I have one of everything in potentia. I can’t give something I’ve already given away. No one would appreciate a talent like mine with dreamers around.”

“What if I asked for seventy-six wishes?” I asked.

“It’s no good,” she said. “I’ve already given more wishes, three wishes, two wishes, infinite wishes…all of the wishes from one to infinity. They say more wishes are always the first to go, and good riddance to that. I had to carry around a ledger for almost five hundred years to keep track of the numbers I had left.”

If she had been at this for half a millennium, that meant all of the obvious wishes would be taken. 

I handed her Eddy’s towel while I thought about what to do. She dried off her legs on the edge of the tub. This was when I noticed she wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Has someone already wished for shoes?” I asked. “I’d like a pair of shoes—“

“Stupid girl.”

“For you.” 

The old woman smiled the kind of smile my teachers used to smile when you got the right answer. 

Of course, because it was the worst moment imaginable, Eddy knocked on the door. 

“You don’t need to hide in there,” he said. “I’ve still got plenty of moonshine.”

With a wink and a nod, the old woman disappeared. In her place, was a new pair of shoes. 

Disappointed, I put them on. They were black pumps with impossible heels, more likely to fit in at the party than the mousy brown flats I’d brought with me—if I was capable of walking in heels, which I definitely wasn’t. 

“I wish I could leave,” I thought. 

As soon as the words formed in my mind, the room started to dissolve. I blinked and found myself in the rain on the sidewalk in front of Eddy’s apartment building wearing a single black shoe and the choice between making my way across New York with a one shoe or wasting my last wish on going home.

This time I mean it: I will never go to one of Eddy’s parties again.


End file.
